The Beam in Our Eye

Sherman, who lived in the South and had many close Southern friends, understood that the ambitions of the South could be quelled only by a sea of blood. He is the decisive personality of the Civil War, yet there never has been a single cinematic treatment of the man. Twenty-one films, by contrast, portray Jesse James, the Confederate guerilla turned outlaw. He is the 50 Cent of the old South.

I do not mean to draw a moral equivalency between would-be slave-owners and the descendants of slaves, but the functional parallel is compelling. According to the Sentencing Project, “More than 60% of the people in prison are now racial and ethnic minorities. For black males in their twenties, one in every eight is in prison or jail on any given day. These trends have been intensified by the disproportionate impact of the ‘war on drugs’, in which three-fourths of all persons in prison for drug offenses are people of color.”

A generation of African-Americans has been decimated. Murder is the leading cause of death among young African-American men; an American black has a 5% lifetime probably of becoming a murder victim (against a 0.7% probably for a white American).

Wright offers one sort of explanation: it is all due to a conspiracy by a racist government that wants to exterminate black people. The comedian and actor Bill Cosby now is touring America to offer a different explanation: the problems of African-Americans stem from a lack of individual responsibility, especially among men. In the May 2008 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, Ta-Nehesi Coates reports on a Cosby event in Detroit, writing, “Cosby had come to Detroit aiming to grab the city’s black men by their collars and shake them out of the torpor that has left so many of them – like so many of their peers across the country – undereducated, overincarcerated, and underrepresented in the ranks of active fathers.”

Well,what I have "processed" over the years is that since a "civil war" by definition is 2 factions fighting for control of the same governmental mechanism,then the War for Southern Independence does not fit that definition,since all the CSA wanted was to go its on way and the Yankees could have Washington with our compliments...I further processed that West Virginia has no Constitutional right to exist....further,that the only time a US Navy vessel was ever captured by an opposing ARMY was when Gen Nathan Bedford Forrest and his cavalry troopers captured one of U.S. Grant's gunboats near Ft Donelson in 1862 and raised merry hell with it up and down the Tennessee River for a while before scuttling it,and that my great grandaddy fought at the Battles of Chickamauga,Lookout Mountain,and Chattanooga in order to keep his slave free plantation "White Oak" out of the hands of Yankee invaders....which he did...my mother and her siblings sold it in 1990...so I think I've "processed" it pretty well on balance

The premise of the article is incorrect as the North and Lincoln did not fight to end slavery. Slavery was a great evil but it's just factually incorrect to say that's why Lincoln and the North waged war on the South. They did so, as Lincoln repeatedly made clear, in order to "preserve the Union."

Whether that was a worthy goal is up to debate considering we had fought a revolution based on the idea that states or at that time, colonies, had a right to self-determination. To rewrite history and suggest the northern invasion was to abolish slavery is nonsense. Only AFTER the war dragged on, took a terrible toll and had ended, did the US abolish slavery. In fact, some Union states including also the federal area of Washington, DC held slaves and practiced slavery during the entirety of the war. Grant's wife had a slave, for example.

But about the only good thing to come of the war was ending slavery, even if that occurred more as a result of happenstance than deliberate policy from the outset.

When truth is replaced by The Narrative, there will be no good to come of it. The Narrative is an excuse for bad behavior. The Narrative is a blame shifting exercise. It almost guarantees that facts and evidence be ignored, distorted, destroyed.

The infantisizing of blacks, turning them into leftist pets also guarantees their fate. Penned pets, half feral to be unleashed only as they are told to sic white society. Not whites...white society. The search for "root causes" is nothing more than class warfare wrapped in a Dashiki robe.

Leftists need to gin up suspect class warfare. It would collapse in a heap if it did not pick at those scabs and keep them bleeding.

NOTHING keeps blacks down more than leftist agitation. They are being used as pawns in the leftist assault and overthrow attempt.

Blacks are not allowed to have jerks, because they are infants in need of coddling. They aren't allowed to be judged on the content of their character because they are caged pets who are not responsible for any of their actions.

RE-posted because y'all should see this. Anyway, several questions discussed and debated here are answered......'>.......:

james wilsonAnother valuable learning experience for me. I've been Golded.

I do have questions about our Hebrew Prophet. Did he save the Union, or end it? If we cannot imagine a world with succession it is because we did not live it. The anti-Federalist arguments look more enduring with each encroachment of Lincoln's new nation.

SpenglerDepends on your point of view, I suppose. The fact that slavery was tolerated at the American Founding was IMHO a disgrace that had to be corrected later, at frightful cost. In that sense Lincoln didn't "save" the Union as it previously had existed but made it into something better (also at cost: the expansion of federal power was a cost of war).

Lincoln could have ended slavery with different policies, but was the South to Secede not accepting them.IMHO, the North could have bought back slaves until there were not enough slaves to have a significant economic impact in the South.This is how was done in the old times in Europe (and ended the slavery in Europe).The North could have joined forces with the UK to shot down any and all slaver's ship (just how they do today with drugs and weapon smuggling). And the Royal Navy was not shy to shot african slavers ports.With the colonial conquest well in their way, European powers would had stopped slavery not just for the sake of justice and fairness, but just to stop their colonies from hemorrhaging workers. It is a poor colony if you have no workers there.

The Confederacy, as Saudi Arabia, would stay, with the Slavery, a commodity producer without significative industrial development. In a few decades after, the Union would have reasserted its power without problems.

But, unfortunately, the need to erase the generations connected to the slavery and the old institutions would have lasted anyway.

While the whole world lives in the debris fields of the fall of the age of kings-- I don't think it enlightening/profitable to triangulate the Israel and the USA in terms of the fall of either the Czar or the Kaiser in +-1918. Rather its better to triangulate the USA and Israel in terms of the death of the Charles 1 in England in 1649--and England today. Why? Because the USA springs from English culture of the 17th and 18th centuries while Israel spring from English culture of the 19th and 20th centuries.

"We didn't do anything, " said one, "We just walked in through the gates."

And someone replied, "But what did you and your fellow soldiers have to go through to get that far?"

That was the right way to open that museum. Because no matter what men did there, other men came from far, far, away, and put a stop to it. And the act of stopping that horror was far, far, greater that the act of starting it.

One thing you seem to forget, history is written by the victors. What you read/know is biased krap. I though this might be a good article, but I couldn't even finish it, it was so left-leaning, as to be intolerable. Robbins has it right, the South only wanted to be left alone, and away from, a totalitarian government, quite similar to today's South/Midwest/Northwest.

I had not seen this article when it was originally published. I now wish I had not read a single other word that Spengler had written over the years. This is the last thing that I will read that is written by the this disgusting piece of human waste. F-Off PJ Media for publishing this blood-thirsty Goldman.

Only a spectacularly stupid person evades acknowledgement that the U.S. Constitution explicitly stipulates that treason shall consist only in levying war against the constituent states of the federation thereby established (or in providing aid and comfort to such enemies).

Heavens to Betsy, but it was the contention of the politicians in the northern rump that this was no "war" at all, but rather the suppression of "secessionist" criminals perpetrating an insurrection against the lawful government sitting in Mordor-on-the-Potomac, all the while using vast numbers of Negro slaves to construct the fortifications thereabouts and continue the erection of the capitol building.

The first and foremost purpose of the war was to preserve the union, the legal relevance of the specific constitution which produced the union and of the concept of the rule of law at all. It was no lie at all.

When the acceding to the additional purpose of ending legal slavery would benefit that other goal, it was adopted.

The war was not illegal, was abjectly necessary, and was not a war of conquest as of immorally taking over another nation.

The ONLY purpose of the war Lincoln knowingly provoked was to preserve federal operating capital, around 75% of which was being extorted from the Southern States, and federal hegemony, which was a requirement for the imposition of "American System" economics as promoted by Lincoln's ideological mentor - mercantilist and Hamiltonian crony capitalist, Henry Clay.

Lincoln's illegal war lost support in the north due to his complete incompetence as a Commander-in-Chief, his tyrannical abuse of northern citizens in response to any and all opposition to his imperialist agenda, and the utterly shameless lack of legitimacy in his "cause".

With that, Lincoln again revealed his true, racist colors when he turned to the exploitation of black African slaves to find a new avenue of support. He pinned his hope on a Haiti-style servile insurrection and renewed support from the fringe abolitionist element. Meanwhile, his unconstitutional edict left slavery untouched under Johnson's military dictatorship in TN, and in D.C. as well. Utter, criminal hypocrisy. That you mindlessly support this rank hypocrisy is no surprise.

Perkins, you spectacular ignoramus, READ the Emancipation Proclamation, particularly the part listing for exclusion the various parishes in Louisiana and other portions of the Southern states actually under military occupation and control by Federal forces at the time of the Proclamation's issue.

The only reason that the northern rump "emancipated" the Negro slaves in the regions still under southern government was to foment a slave uprising.

Y'know; kinda like what the British did during the American Revolution to stir up the Indians against the colonies who'd dared to secede from the Empire.

The obstinate stupidity of the Lincoln cult - their flagrant cement-headedness and denial of a reality that conflicts with their obscene fairy tales - would be beneath contempt were it not possible to hold even such crippled and scrabbling vermin in the focus of honest men's hatred.

What do you think any of that has to do with it? Lincoln had no legal authority to declare slaves confiscated war material in any part of the country where the Confederacy had no authority, and he didn't pretend to have it. What of it, other than to show he scrupulously obeyed the legal limits of his power, and that he was no tyrant at all?

Perkins, you idiot, the declaration of chattel slaves as "confiscated war material" was in effect BEFORE the Emancipation Proclamation had been issued. Can't you keep even your own propaganda straight?

Lincoln acted without "legal authority" from beginning to end of his War to Enforce the Morrill Tariff, which point was made so repeatedly and vehemently throughout the states of the northern rump that he acted - in criminal violation of the First Amendment - to shut down dozens of newspapers and even to imprison articulate defenders of the rule of law all over the republic he allegedly served.

Bah. You're mentally as well as morally bankrupt, and therefore to hell with you.

My point was, that he had no authority and pretended to have none, to declare them either confiscated or free in areas no longer in rebellion. That he carefully respected the legal limits on his authority, hence he was no tyrant, Where is the counterargument you pretend to?

Lincoln had the authority from the constitution to enforce the Morrill and every other tariff, and the Confederacy had no legal authority to pretend otherwise--it was a funding mechanism the Founders intended for the national government which the South accede to in the constitution. He had the authority to shutdown pro-Confederate newspapers every bit as much as the Revolutionaries had the right to tar-and-feather Royalists and the Southerners ad to burn down abolitionist newspapers, and in fact under the definition of sedition, he actually had legal authority to do it.

The mentally and morally bankrupt ones are the ones who pretend the constitution doesn't have any black and white meaning, and that the CSA was about something other than preserving slavery.

"Lincoln had the authority from the constitution to enforce the Morrill and every other tariff, and the Confederacy had no legal authority to pretend otherwise--it was a funding mechanism the Founders intended for the national government which the South accede to in the constitution."----Perkins, you idiot, the Constitution admitted tariffs and other excises for NO PURPOSE other than the generation of revenues, meaning that explicitly "protective" tariffs (e.g., the 1828 "Tariff of Abominations" and the Whigs' - er, Republicans' - 1861 Morrill Tariff) were strictly forbidden, else the southern states would never have ratified the U.S. Constitution to begin with.

The practices of mercantilism - of which such protective tariffs are a prime example - were in greatest part what the American colonists had undertaken THEIR acts of secession in order to escape.

"The practices of mercantilism - of which such protective tariffs are a prime example - were in greatest part what the American colonists had undertaken THEIR acts of secession in order to escape."

Regrettable as it may be, the Founders never rebelled against mercantilism--they built it into the constitution--they rebelled against mercantilism in which they had no say.

The tariff of Abominations was dead and gone, never to be resurrected. The South had no cause in 1860 to complain of it The Morrill tariff was a revenue generating mechanism, and one Lincoln was fine to the see the end of, if it would bring the CSA to leave off from their treason.

"Regrettable as it may be, the Founders never rebelled against mercantilism--they built it into the constitution--they rebelled against mercantilism in which they had no say."---Perkins, you flaming idiot, the sovereign states each SEVERALLY elected to secede from the British Empire, and in fact the treaty ending the hostilities of the American Revolution was conducted between the King of England and each of the original 13 states signatory thereunto.

The union into which the several states had entered upon ratification of the U.S. Constitution was VOLUNTARY - emphatically so, stipulated not only in Virginia's articles of ratification but also in those of Rhode Island and New York, each polity reserving to itself in perpetuity the right to resume the powers that they had delegated to the federal government were that federal government to become oppressive of their liberties.

The people of the export-dependent states (chiefly in the south and the midwest) had every cause to "complain" of the Whigs' - er, doggone it, the Republicans' - corporate welfare flagrantly "protective" tariffs, and the Tariff of 1828 (nullified quite effectively by South Carolina's militant armed resistance to the collection thereof) was anything BUT "dead and gone" in terms of its effect as both legal precedent and enforcement of the constraints within the U.S. Constitution.

The right of the secessionist southern states to pick up their marbles and leave Lincoln's crooked game was acknowledged in a majority of the NORTHERN newspapers publishing in 1860 and 1861.

It was only South Carolina's perfectly legal effort to evict Lincoln's TAX COLLECTORS from a militarily untenable "fort" in Charleston Harbor that gave the American Lenin the tenuous "Jenkin's Ear" excuse for which he and his accessories had been scheming.

And under the Articles, they became one nation in perpetuity, nothing the Constitution changed. I note you side-stepped the fact the Founders had no objection to tariffs or mercantilism, only such taxes the had no say in. Maybe if you weren't the "flaming idiot" here that point.

And actually if Buchanan had given Jackson's answer to secession there may well have been no war.

"The right of...1860 and 1861. "

Some journalists then as now are now are in league with the enemy, what's new?

"It was only ...had been scheming."

The tax collectors had every right to be there, per the constitution. The CSA had no right to fire in the fort. The criminals got what was coming to the for attempting to destroy the constitution and it's Republic.

"The tax collectors had every right to be there [in a customs collection post, "Fort" Sumter, with cannon overlooking the port of Charleston], per the constitution."----Perkins, you persistent idiotic stain on the public escutcheon, the state of South Carolina had exercised the unalienable right of secession, whereupon the U.S. Constitution did not RUN in Charleston Harbor, and Lincoln's cluster of revenue agents comprised nothing more than the obstinate occupation of a HOSTILE FOREIGN POWER impeding the commerce of a sovereign nation.

Kinda like if the British Empire had asserted some kind of "constitutional right" to retain a fortification on Governors Island smack dab in the middle of New York Harbor.

That, you blithering dork, is called an act of war, and thus the Confederacy - of which the state of South Carolina was a constituent - had not only the right but the duty to take possession of that artillery-laden intrusion upon this economically vital seaport.

You and your other apologists for slavery are the ones who can't read the whole thing. You pretend Lincoln was a tyrant when the whole thing the Confederacy fought for was for the powers of the southern 1% like Jefferson having a right to whip enslaved children to make nails faster, all the while raping the slave girls--it has since come to my attention there is no way, giving a human pregnancy of around 9 months, that Jefferson was not himself raping his slaves.

That's what the Confederacy was all about, opposing tyranny had nothing to do with it.

I don't need to "pretend" - the way you pretend that secession is defined as "insurrection". That's because I can go look the term up just like any other sane person.

The States ratifying the Constitution granted no power to the general government over secession; likewise secession is not prohibited to the States in Art. I, Sec. 10, which contains an exhaustive list of other powers so prohibited. Neither does the Constitution explicitly state or even imply that membership in the United States is "perpetual", in stark contrast to the Articles of Confederation, which was replaced - in toto - by the Constitution.

Therefore, secession is a power reserved to the States, per the Tenth Amendment.

Lincoln openly argued for this concept in 1848:

"Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable,-- most sacred right--a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government, may choose to exercise it."

Lincoln was for secession before he was against it, i.e., before it became damaging to his political goals of repaying his northern cronies and former employers with wealth extorted from the South.

The constitution grants powers over certain areas of law to the national government--that means the states no longer have power over those areas of law. The constitution states the national government can use force to enforce the laws it makes over those areas of law with the military. There are no statements to the contrary in the 10th amendment, no, "nevermind" clause.

"Lincoln openly argued for this concept in 1848: "

No he didn't he was arguing in favor of a right to revolution, which is a distinct thing from a pretension to there being a right to secession in the constitution despite the supremacy and insurrection clauses.

You have provided no evidence Lincoln was a tyrant who provoked a war. The CSA provoked the war by claiming it had a right to ignore the constitution. You also have ignored this phrase:

"No he didn't he was arguing in favor of a right to revolution, which is a distinct thing from a pretension to there being a right to secession in the constitution despite the supremacy and insurrection clauses."

It victimized every slave held in the confederacy, and threatened to victimize their progeny ad infinitum; and every person who ever sacrificed for the sake of founding a nation on principles of constitutional self governance. The crime was extra legally ignoring the constitution and the laws made pursuant to it, and by violent treason at that.

"Your baseless nonsense is self-refuting."

Meanwhile, you have yet to explain what language in the 10th repeals the supremacy clause, insurrection clause, necessary and proper clause, or any other part of the constitution.

Wrong, numbnutz. Slaves weren't "victimized" by secession. They were victimized by being kidnapped by their "brothers" in Africa and sold - by Africans - to British, Dutch and Portuguese slave traders. See: your baseless nonsense IS self-refuting.

"you have yet to explain"

None required. Not a single one of those mentions anything about secession.